bella has a new beau. he recently loaned her his wrestling sweatshirt which she wore for three, maybe four days straight. after a few days i commented on it. when i did she smiled, lifted the fabric to her nose and in a completely stereotypical and squeally way said "it smells like joshua vance plus puppies."

for those who have not had the privilege, joshua vance is a dreamy and uber-cool young man we know. you can get a glimpse of him here teaching alex how to wake-board. we won't get into the nuances of her comparing the smell of this boy to the smell of another boy. those feel like dangerous waters.

but i am perfectly ok admitting that i am nearly absolutley certain no one in the history of my life has ever said, "oh my god, this smells like troy dearmitt and puppies." maybe "this smells like troy dearmitt and the week-old newspapers beneath a bunch of puppies" but never just troy and puppies.

i'm a regimented person. so much so that people mock and ridicule me for the amount of structure in my life. i have talked to many people who say that sort of daily rigor is not for them--even if we have just discussed some challenge in their life where a routine is the exact answer to a problem they might be battling. this is most certainly my family's position on this matter. dad's schedules are...

a few years back our car broke down in sidney nebraska. we were en route to utah for our spring break holiday. we left sidney with a surprising number of good memories and warm feelings having made the most of our two days in the small town.

a perfect example. one day while out for a walk (to the original Cabelas superstore), we saw this statue honoring the pony express. as the family read the related plaques that circled the impressive monument, bella climbed onto the horse and then called to me to take her picture. as i set up, marty snuck into the background and photo-bombed the shoot. then the boys joined in. and then, well it is just how things tend to unfold around here ...






























in the end, we were able to pull out a decent family photo but those never seem to come at a simple trajectory.

and this episode reminds me of a story that marty tells of when she was a young girl. she grew up in a house with three older brothers. the few times she would bounce downstairs wearing any sort of makeup she would get mercilessly taunted by her brothers. a popular one was for them to ask who beat her up and if she would just give them their name they would go give them a good pounding. this constant jibing kept marty from ever drifting too far into the it-girl lane (it-girl/it-guy being what my family calls the fashion-governed, opinion-driven in-crowd). i'm thankful for this because i share marty's brothers sentiments about makeup on marty (but probably for different reasons)--for me it is not just that it doesn't look right on her, but i think it makes her look less beautiful, or rather, she is always more fetching without the 'enhancements', however minimal she claims they are. marty has no prayer with me because there has never been a day where i haven't thought marty looked her best in the first moments of the day where she is minutes out of bed, wonky hair and all. she hates my position on that but i stand by my claim. this is the life of a natural beauty.

but back to my other natural beauty, bella. i've seen some moments where bella has begun the slide into the it-girl world but each and every time our family tugs her back to the ground and keeps her from ever taking that part of the game too seriously.

do you know how if you ever click on something in amazon, then all the amazon-suggestions and even sidebar ads on other websites tend to be related to what you looked at/for on amazon? marty knows. marty knows because she was looking for new underwear and accidentally clicked on a pair of crotchless panties. ever since that inadvertant selection, those curiously designed pantaloons have been chasing her all over the web.

if asked why she would ever click on that, with an exasperated huff she replies, "it was a small thumbnail, i couldn't tell what they were and they looked weird, so i clicked". our eleven year-old anthony can attest to this confusion as he saw them pop up while using marty's computer to renew some books at the library. he pointed at the screen and asked his mother, "mom, what's wrong with these underwear, that lady's butt is falling out of them".

marty took bella shopping for prom dresses. here's what this looks like in most cases. you have a young, idealistic girl trying on dress after dress for the biggest night of the her life while the mother stands back, assessing things and ticking through the details she doesn't like about the dress (and in some cases the girl's body). in time the girl becomes vexed at the mother's judgement. the cl ...